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Attitudes towards varieties of English among Polish immigrants in the UK

Introduction. Native speakers know about variation in their native language (cf. Labov 2001; Giles and Powesland 1975). Knowledge of variation is part of (socio)linguistic competenceThis means that L2 learners need to acquire the following (on top of the grammatical rules of the language) to achieve native-like competence:Similar frequencies of variation as native speakersSimilar social and linguistic constraints on variationSimilar judgments on the variation they perceiveOur project inves1140

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Attitudes towards varieties of English among Polish immigrants in the UK

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    1. Attitudes towards varieties of English among Polish immigrants in the UK Miriam Meyerhoff* Erik Schleef† Lynn Clark*

    2. Introduction Native speakers know about variation in their native language (cf. Labov 2001; Giles and Powesland 1975). Knowledge of variation is part of (socio)linguistic competence This means that L2 learners need to acquire the following (on top of the grammatical rules of the language) to achieve native-like competence: Similar frequencies of variation as native speakers Similar social and linguistic constraints on variation Similar judgments on the variation they perceive Our project investigates the acquisition of sociolinguistic competence among Polish adolescent immigrants living in the UK

    3. Overview The focus of our project has so far been the acquisition of variation in production This paper will explore the acquisition of attitudes towards varieties of English among immigrant Polish adolescents Research questions: Can immigrant Polish adolescents correctly identify different varieties of English? Do they share similar evaluations of varieties of English as their native-speaker peer group?

    4. Data collection 2 immigrant communities: Edinburgh and London 16 Polish adolescents living in Edinburgh (8 male, 8 female) and 21 Polish adolescents living in London (8 male, 13 female) Comparable corpus collected from of Edinburgh and London-born adolescents Sociolinguistic interviews with all participants and a female researcher from Edinburgh/London respectively Verbal guise experiment included in sociolinguistic interview (Ladegaard 1998).

    5. Verbal Guise Short neutral text from Newsround (http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/default.stm) 8 university-educated females representing: Edinburgh English London English Polish English RP Birmingham English Manchester English Scottish Standard English Newcastle English These varieties were selected because of the ways in which they are typically evaluated by native speakers of British English (Coupland & Bishop 2007)

    6. Verbal Guise

    7. Q1: Can immigrant Polish adolescents identify different varieties of English? The judges in this study were not provided with a forced choice questionnaire Difficulty of defining whether a guise has been correctly identified (cf. McKenzie 2008) E.g. Speaker from Edinburgh identified as being from the UK – not incorrect but could be more accurate Measure correct identification along a continuum

    9. Correct Identification of Polish English

    10. Correct Identification of Standard Englishes

    11. Correct Identification of local Englishes

    12. Q1: Can immigrant Polish adolescents identify different varieties of English? Polish adolescents are significantly worse at identifying varieties of English than their native-speaker peer group Polish adolescents can generally spot Polish English Polish adolescents can identify RP and SSE as British but they cannot be more specific Polish adolescent are significantly worse than their native-speaker peers at identifying which city a speaker comes from based on their accent

    13. Q2: Do Polish adolescents living in the UK share similar evaluations of varieties of English as their native-speaker peer group?

    14. Personality trait evaluations among Edinburgh-born adolescents

    15. Personality trait evaluations among Edinburgh-born adolescents

    16. Personality trait evaluations among Polish-born adolescents living in Edinburgh

    17. Personality trait evaluations among Polish-born adolescents living in Edinburgh

    18. Personality trait evaluations among London-born adolescents

    19. Personality trait evaluations among London-born adolescents

    20. Personality trait evaluations among Polish-born adolescents living in London

    21. Personality trait evaluations among Polish-born adolescents living in London

    22. Q2: Do Polish adolescents living in the UK share similar evaluations of varieties of English as their native-speaker peer group? DIFFERENCES Polish and British adolescents differ mainly in their evaluations of Birmingham and RP English Polish adolescents follow the same general patterns with respect to these varieties Polish adolescents are acquiring the social stereotypes associated with these accents But their evaluations of these varieties are less extreme than their native speaker peers

    23. SIMILARITIES More similarities than differences: (In the Edinburgh 91% of evaluations are same; in London 89% of evaluations are same) But neither UK-born adolescents nor Polish-born adolescents show any strong reactions to most of these guise Problem with adolescent judges? (cf. Labov 2007) Answer to research Q2 is affirmative but this is not necessarily evidence of the acquisition of sociolinguistic competence (could the result of “a lack of experience with...English in the adult world”? (El-Dash & Busnardo 2001:71)

    24. Future directions 3 different methods of data collection Direct measures of attitudes Indirect measures of attitudes Production data Can we triangulate these three methods? Can perception data tell us anything about why Polish adolescents are adopting supra-local patterns of variation in (ing)?

    25. References Ackers, L. & Stalford, H. (2004) A Community for Children?: Children, Citizenship and Migration in the European Union. Ashgate, Aldershot. Coupland, N & Bishop, H (2007) “Ideologised values for British accents”. Journal of Sociolinguistics 11(1): , 74-93. El-Dash, L. & Busnardo, J (2001) “Brazilian attitudes towards English: dimensions of status and solidarity.” International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 11 (1), 57-74. Giles, H & Powesland, P.F (1975). Speech Style and Social Evaluation. London: Academic Press. Labov, W. (2001) Principles of Linguistic Change: Social Factors. Oxford: Blackwell. Labov, W (2007) “The cognitive capacities of the sociolinguistic monitor”. Plenary paper presented at 17th Sociolinguistic Symposium, Amsterdam. Ladegaard, H. (1998) “National stereotypes and language attitudes: the perception of British, American and Australian language and culture in Denmark.” Language and Communication, 18: 251-274. McKenzie, R (2008) “Social factors and non-native attitudes towards varieties of spoken English: a Japanese case study”. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 18(1): 63-88. Salt, J., Miller, J. (2006). “Foreign labour in the United Kingdom: current patterns and trends”. In Office of National Statistics: labour market trends (Ed.) pp. 335-355. Williams, A.; Garrett, P. & Coupland, N (1999). “Dialect recognition”. In D. R. Preston (ed.), Handbook of perceptual dialectology. Philadelphia: Benjamins. 345–358.

    26. ANOVA on verbal-guise data comparing Edinburgh-born and Polish-born mean evaluations of individual traits on 8 guises. Only significant differences in mean evaluations of specific traits reported here

    27. ANOVA on verbal-guise data comparing Lodon-born and Polish-born mean evaluations of individual traits on 8 guises. Only significant differences in mean evaluations of specific traits reported here

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